MEN on BOATS a Fitting Play to Close out the Year
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2019–2020 SEASON MEN ON BOATS BY JACLYN BACKHAUS DIRECTED BY JENNY KOONS NOV 29–DEC 22, 2019 NOW OPEN! TM ESPRESSO DRINKS SNACKS WIFI Make your next meeting/ remote work day/ find-a-quiet-spot-and-read day more interesting. With an abundance of comfortable seating, free wifi, and cozy nooks, Baltimore Center Stage's first floor has been transformed into Mount Vernon's new public gathering space. Come together with friends and colleagues or carve out that quiet time around the hum and artistic energy of your professional theater. Who knows who you might bump into! To Bean is open Monday - Friday from 8am - 3pm and serves a variety of hot and cold coffees and teas, as well as snacks. Support for creating the infrastructure and furnishing of To Bean or Not to BeanTM was provided by a generous gift from long-time Baltimore Center Stage donors and philanthropists George and Betsy Sherman. CONTENTS This program is published by: 3 WelCOME BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE 700 North Calvert Street 4 TiTle PAGE TM Baltimore, MD 21202 DESIGN 6 Bill Geenen Setting ADVERTISING Kristen Cooper 6 Let's UNPACK 410.324.7700 [email protected] 14 CAST BOX OFFICE 410.332.0033 ADMINISTRATION 17 ARTISTIC TEAM 410.986.4000 CENTERSTAGE.ORG 20 ANNUAL FUND [email protected] 26 CAPITAL CAMPAIGN 30 UP NEXT 36 ARTISTIC CORNER 42 STAFF 44 AUDIENCE SERVICES 45 LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT ASSOCIATE PRODUCTION SPONSOR 2019/20 SEASON IS ALSO MADE POSSIBLE BY Material in this program is made available for educational and research purposes only. Selective use has been made of previously published information and images whose inclusion here does not constitute license for Terry Morgenthaler and Patrick Kerins any further re-use. All other material is the property of Baltimore Center Stage. BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE 1 BOARD Terry H. Morgenthaler Hugh W. Mohler, Jr. ABOuT PResiDeNt Charles J. Morton, Jr. Edward C. Bernard J. William Murray ViCe PResiDeNt Charles E. Noell III US August J. Chiasera Rodney Oddoye ViCe PResiDeNt Founded in 1963 and designated Judy M. Phares the State Theater of Maryland Sandy Liotta Jill Pratt ViCe PResiDeNt in 1978, Baltimore Center Stage Philip J. Rauch Brian M. Eakes E. Hutchinson provides the highest quality TReAsUrer Robbins, Jr. theater and programming for Scot T. Spencer Jordan D. Rosenfeld all members of our communities, SeCRetAry Jesse Salazar including youth and families, Charles Schwabe Penny Bank under the leadership of Artistic Robert W. Smith, Jr. Taunya Banks Director Stephanie Ybarra and Scott Somerville Bradie Barr Michele Speaks Executive Director Michael Ross. Mariah Bonner Michael B. Styer Baltimore Center Stage ignites Meredith Borden Harry Thomasian conversations and imaginations Stephanie Carter Donald Thoms by producing an eclectic season Lynn Deering Joe Timmins of professional productions across Jed Dietz Krissie Verbic two mainstages and an intimate Walter B. Doggett III Jane W.I. Droppa 99-seat theater, through engaging tRUSTeeS eMeRItI Amy Elias community programs, and with Katharine C. Juliet A. Eurich inspiring education programs. Blakeslee Beth W. Falcone Everything we do at Center Stage James T. Brady Suzan Garabedian is led by our core values—chief C. Sylvia Brown Sandra Levi Gerstung Martha Head among them being Access Andrew Giddens Sue Hess For All. Our mission is heavily Megan Gillick Murray M. rooted in providing active and Adam Gross Kappelman, MD+ open accessibility for everyone, Cheryl O'Donnell E. Robert Kent, Jr. Guth regardless of any and all barriers, Joseph M. David J. Hodnett Langmead to our Mainstage performances, Elizabeth J. Himelfarb Kenneth C. Lundeen education initiatives, and Hurwitz Marilyn Meyerhoff community programming. Kathleen W. Hyle Esther Pearlstone Wendy Jachman Monica Sagner Chris Jeffries George M. Sherman John J. Keenan J.W. Thompson Webb John McCardell Laurie McDonald + Deceased 2 BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE WELCOME Dear Baltimore Center Stage Members and Guests, 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of John Wesley Powell’s expedition through the Grand Canyon by way of the Colorado River, making MEN ON BOATS a fitting play to close out the year. But, that’s not why I’m choosing to share this piece with you—my motivation is far less academic: I love to laugh. STEPHANIE YBARRA ARTISTIC DIRECTOR My favorite stories to tell on stage involve plays that subvert a dominant paradigm while creating ample space for actors to facilitate collective imagining and joy. The combination of playwright Jaclyn Backhaus’ raucous words and director Jenny Koons’ impeccable taste in hilarity has yielded some of my favorite acts of tomfoolery as well as sophisticated conversations about whose history we’re telling. For the last few weeks, this group of artists has been clowning around in our fifth-floor rehearsal room finding every which way possible to both entertain and provoke your imagination. Thank you for joining us on this particular adventure. Oars up, everyone!!! Stephanie Ybarra Artistic Director BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE 3 MEN ON BOATS BY JACLYN BACKHAUS DIRECTED BY JENNY KOONS NOV 29–DEC 22, 2019 4 BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE THE CAST THE ARTISTIC TEAM in alphabetical order Ceci Fernandez Jaclyn Backhaus John Wesley Powell Playwright Kai Heath Jenny Koons Hall Director Haruna Lee Ruth Anne Watkins Old Shady Production Stage Manager Keren Lugo Danielle Teague-Daniels O.G. Howland/Tsauwiat Resident Stage Manager Patrena Murray John Colton Sumner Danielle Zandri Stage Manager Sara Porkalob Hawkins Cathy Hwang Assistant Stage Manager Jessica Ranville William Dunn Josie R. Felt Eileen Rivera Assistant Stage Manager Seneca Howland/The Bishop Stephanie Osin Cohen Elena Urdaneta Scenic Designer Bradley Hahnji Jang Natalie Woolams-Torres Costume Designer Frank Goodman/Mr. Asa Stacey Derosier Lighting Designer There will be no intermission. Elisheba Ittoop NOTICE: simulated gun shot Sound Designer/Original Music Rebecca Feldman, CSA Ada Karamanyan Casting KNOW BEFORE WE GO Toni Rae Salmi Silence your cell phones— Assistant Director the play is better that way! Susannah Hyde Photography and videography are not Assistant Scenic Designer permitted during the show; however, please feel free to take photos in the Ali Eckler theater before or after the performance! Assistant Costume Designer If you’d like to post these pictures on Tyler Omundsen social media, please be sure to credit Assistant Lighting Designer the show's artists: PLAYWRIGHT: @queenofseltzer DIRECTOR: @jennykoons SCENIC DESIGNER: @steph.osin.cohen All the Actors and Stage Managers LIGHTING DESIGNER: @stacemadeaface employed in this production are Members of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of ORIGINAL MUSIC AND SOUND DESIGNER: @eebalish Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. COSTUME DESIGNER: @hahnjij BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE 5 SETTING TIME: 1869 LOCATION: On boats. By Sabine Decatur, Artistic Fellow LET’S UNPACK! The real-life saga of John Wesley Powell’s Men on Boats journey nestles at the core of American identity, alongside other colonial explorers like Lewis and Clark and Christopher Columbus and Davy Crockett: an embodiment of the mythology of manifest destiny. But like so many of the historical narratives we’ve inherited, Powell’s version of the story comes with some serious baggage. Who controls the narrative? How are they framing it? Can we use satire to reimagine history? We shore can! In Powell’s journals, we read about the But what could happen if we thought wild adventures, the waterfalls, the differently about our history? Even wonders of America! But what we don’t with an incomplete archive, what can see are the women who fought in the we do, in scholar Saidiya Hartman’s Civil War and the Mexican Revolution. words, “both to tell an impossible story We don’t see the black cowboys who and to amplify the impossibility of its had been crisscrossing the country telling”? One place to start might be on horseback all through the 19th reading indigenous perspectives like century. We don’t see the rich and Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous deep histories of the many indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. populations that have called this Another is satire—like Men on Boats! By land home long before Powell and telling a story that lets the audience his crew “discovered” it. Our memory fill in the blanks, we get to play with of this history leaves huge gaps, and history and make comedy out of that is no accident; white men stay at challenging narratives. the center of defining American myths, Just like Powell's expedition, and everyone else is removed, erased, reimagining our own history is a and relegated to the gaping holes of mammoth task. What do we take with the archive. 6 BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE First camp of the John Wesley Powell expedition. us on this journey? What stories do we tell ourselves about Baltimore? How do we intersect with colonization today? Let’s unpack. Baltimore was “Just Around the Riverbend” In 1995, Disney released the film Matoaka wasn't mentioned in his first Pocahontas, popularizing a version publications in 1608 or 1612, but by of the story of the British colonization the time he published his 1624 book of the mid-Atlantic. In the movie, John “The Generall Historie of Virginia,” the Smith clashes with the Powhatan tribe story had become more and more until a young Native woman—in real embellished; it is still debated today if life named Matoaka—opens his eyes to there is any validity in his archives. the “colors of the wind.” Smith’s myths about Matoaka don’t A notable part of the story that the film just throw our historical memory into skips over is John Smith’s expedition question. They also continue to feed through the Chesapeake that led into the oversexualization of indigenous him right up the Patapsco River to women and directly contribute to the Baltimore.